History

Course summary

The course allows students to study a range of exciting, challenging and invigorating topics across a 500- year span. Across the components students will develop a critical eye for examining sources; understand how history has, in turn, been shaped and what the defining factors, events and figures were in shaping the course of both national and international history in three key periods. Students will learn to develop their own appreciation of the history, make their own judgments and construct effective and analytical arguments around the validity of key historical debates, exploring whether it was good old-fashioned power politics at the heart of Henry VIII’s religious reforms; whether Elizabeth I’s reign was indeed a Golden Age and was it Reagan, and not Gorbachev, who was responsible for ending the Cold War. Students will explore political, economic and social history, and through their historical investigation will develop their own research skills as a historian, exploring different interpretations and developing their own knowledge and understanding of why the Civil Rights agenda moved forward in this crucial period.